Third highest scoring team in NFL history gets shut out in the first half; incredibly dumb and pointless offsides penalty wipes out game-sealing interception; game-sealing interception was needed in the first place thanks to terrible clock management (3:32 left in the game and five timeouts between the two teams and you don't bother calling a run until you're on the goal line, having burned off almost no clock?); kicked a game-tying FG when there was still time left for one more shot at the end zone

Sounds like a choke job to me. Maybe not a blow 28 point lead in 20 minutes choke job, but nonetheless another snatching defeat from the jaws of victory Chiefs playoff classic.

Don't disagree that the defense on this team is terrible, but I have a hard time pinning this on them (except for that egregious and inexcusable offsides) when this team was built all around offense and the defense did, all things considered, a pretty good job of keeping the game manageable while the offense went AWOL for an entire half. It's not the defense's fault that Mahomes overthrew a wide open Williams and then followed up by running 15 yards backward to get himself sacked outside of field goal range. It's not the defense's fault that the Chiefs rolled up, what was it, like -11 yards of offense in the first quarter or something (that's probably an exaggeration, but I don't feel like checking the real numbers -- it was bad, in any case)? The defense intercepted Brady in the end zone and then the offense went three and out on the ensuing possession. I'm not going to say they couldn't get a whole lot better on defense, because, well, obviously. But if you build an offense-first team and then don't bother to play offense for a half, you can't really expect to win.

The Chiefs would be going to the Super Bowl if the defense had managed to get a stop in the last two minutes of regulation or in OT, it's true, but when you build a team the way the Chiefs are built, if you're relying on your defense to get you a game-saving stop, something has already gone wrong well before that point.

Seems like the NFL was figuring out the offense the second half of the season. It seems perfectly reasonable that someone like Belichick could come up with a plan to bollox up Mahomes for a half, particularly since they had very little time to adjust as their defense could not get off the field. TOP was like 40\20 Patriots.

I do expect our defense to be able to get a stop at the end, or at least hold someone to a field goal. They seem to have nothing but their base D and an ocasional vanilla blitz.